Why Putin hates Japan’s PM more than he does Harper

Stephen Harper can be forgiven for being a bit peeved, miffed or even frustrated that his vigorous condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine have drawn little more than a stifled yawn from the Russian leader.

It’s true that there has been a bit of an uptick in the number of long-range Russian bomber aircraft brushing up against the Canadian and United States air identification zones in the Arctic. But these ten flights last year involved no pushing and shoving, and were intended as a message for Washington just as much as for Ottawa.

Putin’s insouciance at Harper’s chest-thumping act seems even more pronounced when set against the Russian president’s angry and hostile reaction to the intrusion into the Ukraine issue by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

On June 6, Abe became the first Japanese leader to visit Ukraine. He voiced strong support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and condemned Russia’s annexation last year of the Ukrainian province of Crimea. All this gave a coat of rhetorical icing to the US$1.8 billion cake of economic assistance for Kyiv that Tokyo announced earlier this year. Beside that, the Harper government’s donation of $18 million worth of defensive military gear and humanitarian aid looks like chump change.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko responded to Abe by likening Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his continued arming and reinforcing of separatists in eastern Ukraine to Russia’s occupation for 70 years of Japanese islands in the Kuril Islands chain.

The reaction from Moscow was immediate. Abe’s entourage had hardly checked out of Kyiv before Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Moscow will speed up the construction of military and civilian facilities on the disputed Kuril Islands. This archipelago of 52 islands stretches 1,300 kilometres north from Japan’s Hokkaido Island, and was seized by what was then the Soviet Union in the final days of the Second World War.

Russia’s occupation of these islands continues to be a major irritant in Tokyo-Moscow relations — so much so that Japan and Russia have not yet signed a peace treaty formally ending the Second World War.

There are still tentative hopes in Tokyo that Putin will make a vaguely scheduled visit to Japan later this year; the issue of the Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories, would be high on the agenda.

But looking at the other events on the calendar for later this year, and the reasons why Abe has strode so forcefully into the Ukrainian issue, it seems unlikely that Putin will want to make the trip.

There was alarm in Moscow in April when a new U.S.-Japan defence agreement was announced. The Russians quickly envisaged a re-emergence of U.S. plans for ballistic missile defence — known colloquially as ‘Star Wars’ when first imagined by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Abe’s visit to Kyiv happened in the context of the summit of the G7 major industrialized counties — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — held in Berlin. His act of solidarity with his G7 partners on the Ukraine issue was a purposeful addition to Abe’s efforts since he returned to the prime minister’s office in December, 2012, to recast Japan as a ‘normal’ diplomatic and military power.

China’s growing military power and its swaggering political posture has energized Abe’s plan to amend the pacifist elements in the Japanese constitution forced on the country after the Second World War. Japan is responding to China’s rise as a regional military power by aiming to become a more dependable diplomatic and military partner in such things as peacekeeping operations, responses to humanitarian disasters and operations against piracy in the seas off the Horn of Africa.

Abe’s initiatives come after years of lobbying by the U.S. for Japan to shoulder a greater part of the burden of maintaining peace and security in Asia. But just as Japan has become ready and willing to take the steps Washington has wanted, there are increasing doubts not only in Japan, but throughout the region, about whether the U.S. is still a dependable ally.

For this reason, Japan and other Asian allies like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea are seeking to bolster their own alliances. Other countries with good reason to be worried about China’s ambitions, like Vietnam and the Philippines, are equally determined to have defence in depth in case Washington proves unreliable in a crisis.

Putin and his advisers in the Kremlin seem to have more faith in the Japan-U.S. alliance than do some in the Tokyo government. There was alarm in Moscow in April when a new U.S.-Japan defence agreement was announced. Russian analysts focused on the elements allowing the Japanese military to support U.S.-led operations around the globe. The Russians quickly envisaged a re-emergence of U.S. plans for ballistic missile defence — known colloquially as ‘Star Wars’ when first imagined by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Moscow fears that an effective BMD system would negate the deterrent value of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and would lay Russia open to a ‘first strike’ attack by the western powers. It was President Barack Obama’s plans to deploy a BMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009 that scuppered the American leader’s efforts to “reset” the relationship with Moscow.

Now Moscow sees the possibility of Washington making Japan part of a BMD encirclement that could neutralize Russia’s nuclear arsenal. So the announcement by Russia’s defence minister of military infrastructure construction in the Kuril Islands, just off Japan’s northern coast, is a more potent and far-reaching warning than any mere angry reaction to Abe’s performance in Kyiv.

Upcoming events in August and September will play into this drama. At the end of August, Abe is to give a speech marking the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. The amount of planning the Japanese government has put into this speech is quite extraordinary. That’s because Abe plans to voice some sort of apology for the actions of militarist imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s — one intended to put to bed the whole question of whether the country is truly regretful.

Tokyo knows there’s no hope of getting any acknowledgement of that regret from Beijing, which uses ferocious nationalism and anti-Japanese indoctrination of schoolchildren to provide a veneer of legitimacy to its one-party state.

But Japan hopes it can get acceptance from South Korea, a major victim of Japanese imperialism. Tokyo is even negotiating the wording of Abe’s speech with Seoul.

And Moscow sees an opportunity to get its oar into this turbulent water. Recent media reports in Moscow, quoting Defence Ministry officials, said that Russia will hold celebrations on September 2 to mark the end of the War in the Pacific.

The events will be held on the Kuril Islands.

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of “Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He has been a foreign correspondent and international affairs columnist for nearly 40 years. He was European bureau chief for the Toronto Star and then Southam News in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In 1989 he was appointed Africa correspondent by Southam News and in 1993 was posted to Hong Kong to cover Asia. For the last few years he has been based in Vancouver, writing international affairs columns for what is now the Postmedia Group. He left the group last year and now writes for a range of newspapers and websites. [email protected]

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

6 comments on “Why Putin hates Japan’s PM more than he does Harper”

Billions of dollars were usurped from the tax coffers of Americans and Russians during the cold war and it was all over with a couple of meetings between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev. These disagreements between Nations are more about economic alliances, falling in line with The New World Corporate Order.

Great article on Japan.
I used to watch an English-language station from Japan… I think it was called Nippon Today?
And on every satellite photo weather report, it showed the Kuril Islands as being part of Japan.
That was revealing to me, as every map I’d ever seen growing up in Canada showed them as being part of Siberia.
Has the Japan/Russia dislike not been going on for hundreds of years?
I don’t see how Putin would find Harper even remotely threatening, without the support of concentrated media ownership in Canada, i think other nations see him as a shallow, two-dimensional actor.

What a superb insightful piece this is!!
Many of us long for more coverage like this and so appreciate it.
This world is far far greater than our own doorstep and the relentless navel gazing we can fall into so easily.
Yes, we need to be passionate and aware and engaged and we are thank Heavens, but we also need some
perspective.
Much of that has been temporarily lost with this godforsaken narrow minded tight regime.
But Canadians are far more worldly and in fact, genuinely interested in the rest of the planet.
Thank you Mr. Manthorpe.